Bella Swan, This Is Your Life
by snshyne
Summary: O/S Black Ballon Contest Entry. A recount of a life disastrous. One bad thing after another as told by Bella Swan to her mother. A/H, Bella Swan, OOC, M, Dark Themes.


**The Black Balloon Contest**

**Title:** Bella Swan, This Is Your Life

**Your pen name:** snshyne

**Characters:** Bella Swan

**Warning:** This story contains harsh subjects. Enter at your own risk.

**Disclaimer:** All things Twilight belong to Stephenie Meyer. The manipulation is mine.

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**Bella Swan, This Is Your Life**

Bella Swan POV  
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"Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all"_ - Heinrich Heine

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You used to tell me I was a happy child. And by _you,_ I meant my seriously over deluded excuse of a mother.

"When did you become so angry and cynical?" Renee would always ask me during one of her trips on the self-pity party train. Also known as, the only real time she made an effort to talk to me. This question meant she wanted me to tell her how much I loved her and how great a mother she was.

Gee, let me think...perhaps the day you came into my room, while I was happily playing with my barbies and smiled in my face as you told me that Charlie wasn't my real father? That meant I had been living a lie all those years. The same day you took me to see my _real dad_, Marcus Volturi. Who happened to be moving out of state and I wouldn't have any contact with him. How convenient for him.

He relieved his conscience by me knowing about his existence and he was now rid of the burden of taking care of me as he scampered off to suburbia with his perfectly blond haired children and pregnant, super model wife.

My relationship with Charlie fell apart because, as a child, I didnt really know how to process that information. It didn't help that one day, when Charlie was leaving for work and I said, "bye daddy", you told me I couldn't have two daddies and I would need to choose one. At the time, I felt like loving Charlie betrayed my 'real dad'. Later, I realized I was angry at all three of you for lying to me.

As a child, your parents were God. I thought Charlie couldn't possibly love me because I wasn't his daughter, but Marcus must because parents love their children. _Right?_ Torn between what I knew up until that point and my childish reasoning, Charlie became Charlie and in my head, Marcus became dad. In my head because I hardly got a chance to speak with him to say it out loud.

Perhaps it happened when I went to school shortly after and saw other kids with their dads. Perhaps it was when I heard about the baseball game Eric Yorkie's father took him to or when Jessica Stanley's dad dropped her off at ballet. Feeling ashamed and outcast for being the only girl in the second grade with two fathers and feeling like neither of them wanted me.

Charlie stopped playing with me and Marcus only contacted me when his conscience was eating away at him for being a complete asshole. In the future, I would have to tell him to fuck off in an attempt to gain a grip on some of the ire I would be carrying, but it wouldn't help. It was already festered too deep into my soul.

Oh! I know! Maybe the anger took root when you divorced Charlie, killing the small sense of stability I clung to because Charlie was always grounded if nothing else. You moved us to Phoenix where you met Phil.

Ahh, good old Phil. All American guy for an All American sport. Your perfect knight in shining armor complete with a pennant and a paycheck.

You never saw how he looked at me. You turned your back when he kicked me and tossed me down the stairs. I didn't recall ever being disobedient or misbehaving. Maybe unobservant, as I spent a good deal of time with my nose in a book, but I always did as I was told. So excuse me if being told, "it was for my own good because discipline was good for a solid upbringing_"_ was complete bullshit to me.

How could you not hear my cries when he snuck into my room at night and forced himself on me? How did you ignore my blood stained sheets after that first night?

Talk about mixed signals! He beat my ass during the day and then fucked me at night while he told me how much he "loved" me.

I wouldn't know it until much later, but the concept of love and sex would turn out to be one in the same for me.

"Only have sex with a man you love" you used to say. I hated Phil. What did you think about that?

This was also when I learned the only person you loved was yourself. A tough thing to learn at age twelve.

Desperately trying to fit in, I hung out with the cool kids until you decided to find religion and the cult church you joined brainwashed you into throwing me into their school. You tried to reason with me that you didn't want to see me throw my life away with the degenerates in public school. As if you cared about what happened to me. And yet you ignored my tears the day I got my period. The day I realized Phil's lack of condom usage was going to become a problem and knew you would blame me. To his credit, he saw the maxi pad in the trash and got a fucking clue. The maxi pads you said I had to use because virgins don't use tampons.

There was no limit to how deep your delusions ran.

I thought you had found out about the one time I tried a cigarette. I cried and begged and pleaded for you not to send me to that stuffy school. I promised to never try cigarettes again. I even told you how they made me cough and gag and tasted like the bottom of a fireplace to show you how much I hated them. Maybe you would see I was a good girl and I would stay out of trouble.

You didn't care!

I never blended in at that school. All of the kids there knew each other from like conception or kindergarten and had no room for someone like me. Again, I was the outcast thanks to you.

So while you played tea party dress-up and flirted with the choir director, I was being picked on because my mother, the slut, was shacking up with a pro-baseball player. They either talked to me to get Phil's autograph or stuck gum in my hair, for which you chastised me, saying gum would rot my teeth and you weren't going to ask Phil for money for braces.

In my head, I thought maybe if I had fucked up teeth, he would stop shoving his cock in my mouth. I considered pulling them out with pliers at one point, but the _thought_ of the blood caused me to black out and I knew I could never go through with it.

And then I got boobs. Boobs and hips and suddenly boys were interested. Boys that never looked at me before and were too busy pressing against my "friends". And by "friends", I meant the girls you made me invite to the sleepovers you forced me to throw year after year. The daughters of your church friends, the only "friends" I had since you made me attend that dreadful wasteland. The same girls who locked me out of my own room as they went through my things, while I sat and cried in the hallway. You simply said they couldn't hear me knocking on the door over the music and I should be more careful when a door closes behind me.

Call me crazy, but when you believed the daughters of your friends, when they said I broke the lock on your jewelry box and stole your diamond earrings to hock for cash, what did you think would happen? When I told you it was Victoria and you still had Phil beat me and sent me to my room without dinner? When you saw me next with my sore backside and tear swollen eyes; that I wouldn't be scarred from it all?

When you saw Victoria's mother in church and remarked on her pretty earrings, which looked so similar to your missing pair and yet you still blamed me; did you think I had any hope of not being untrusting and jaded?

Starved for any real affection, I found myself on my back or my knees more times than I cared to count. In search of that missing element from any boy who gave me a second glance. For a short time, they made me feel pretty and wanted. For a little while, I didn't feel like a degenerate outcast, unworthy of anyone's attention. It didn't occur to me, as they zipped their pants and told me to keep it a secret, it was because I was ugly and insignificant.

It didn't occur to me, as I watched Tyler wrap his arms around Lauren and walk away after I had his dick in my mouth or Jasper twirl Alice around after he just finished pounding me with his cock, that I wasn't worth being seen in public with. So I continued my dalliances, in private, for their pleasure and my temporary feelings of being accepted.

As I cried myself to sleep every night, I tried to convince myself that it was nothing. That these boys really did love me, but didn't want to share me and that's why I was kept a secret.

I always did well in school and maybe that's why you never bothered to notice. But I had to. I had to do well to be able to get away from you. I did well because that gold star on my paper or that gold honors sash around my neck, as I accepted my diploma, were the only things I had as any piece of comfort and normalcy.

When I graduated and went to college, you pretended to care that I was going away from home. That you were sad and going to miss me and I believed you. At first. And then I was in school for three weeks when you called and told me that you were turning my room into a yoga studio.

So when I came home for holidays and breaks, I had to sleep on the couch in the living room because "guest rooms are reserved for guests". You still didn't hear my cries as Phil found me in the night and told me how much he missed me as he found his inevitable release.

Part of me started to look forward to him telling me that he missed me. I knew it was sick. But at that point, I was taking anything I could get.

I should have known for sure, I was a fucking mess, when I met a guy in college, called him my best friend, fell in love and gave him everything I had. Years ago, I had already determined marriage wasn't for me. And I'd be damned if I was bringing any children into my fucked up existence, but for him, for Edward Masen, I was willing to try.

Edward came with his own set of fucked up problems and the rational side of me told me it would never work. The emotional side won and I toughed it out.

I figured he had his issues and I had mine; we made a perfect pair. I thought he could understand me more than anyone ever had. I finally felt a small shred of acceptance for who I was. For what you made me.

I dealt with his sullenness, his unwillingness to participate in life, his erratic moods and his disgruntled attitude. I loved him.

When he dropped out of school or rather when he was placed on academic suspension because he couldn't get his shit together, I should have ended it. Especially when I started to be the only one he relied on since his family disowned him. He borrowed my car to get to and from his dead end job; he took money from me. He would crash with me in my apartment, but never paid a single bill.

He would shout at me, throw things at me and then ignore me or buy me pretty flowers and a teddy bear. Inevitably, we'd be right back where we started because he used all the money he had on those flowers and the bear and I would feel bad.

Looking at him so sad and broken, I couldn't give up on him. Stupid me, I had hoped it would work out. It had to work out. I had no one else and I was tired of being alone.

The same hope I had deep down inside that _maybe_ you actually loved me.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Maybe that's when the cynicism took over.

I held out for those moments in bed where we connected the most and my world seemed to just fit together. Again, sex and love were one and the same. I hated falling asleep those nights because morning would always come and everything would be all shit again.

Maybe it was my own fault, but I believed in the lies about a degree getting you any job you wanted. I went to UCLA for goodness sakes! That should count for something.

Instead, I followed Edward to San Diego and we started working in dead end jobs. Money was tight and I refused to ask you, even though I knew you were more than _able_ to help. The last time I did, you snapped at me that I was a big girl and it was about time I started taking care of myself. I guess the last fifteen years of my life didn't count because I thought that's what I'd been doing.

When I met Edward, I knew he was flighty, but it only got worse as our relationship progressed. The bedroom fire died and I found myself resenting his existence as I was still the only responsible person in the relationship. I got more responsible; he became even less accountable. I compromised so much of who I thought I was for him. I swore in the seven years we were together, I aged about twenty.

I lost my job and begrudgingly moved home when you told me you were divorcing Phil because of his philandering ways. Boy, if I had a nickel for every time I heard that! But I had no choice. I had nowhere else to go. Edward came with me because he said he loved me and I honestly thought I loved him. Maybe a change of scenery would help.

It didn't.

Over the years, I've wanted to kill myself many times, but I think I started to hit the lowest of the lows at that point. I expected to be successful or working my way through a graduate program, happy and free. Not tied down and resentful. How could one be so bitter at twenty-four? I was scared to let him go for fear of never finding anyone to love me and accept my issues.

Fuck knows I couldn't talk to you because all you did was drone on about your own shit. I just wanted to scream at you that Phil was a whore and had always been a whore, but you were just too deaf, dumb, and blind to see it.

I wanted to show you the cut marks inside my thigh for every time he crept into my room at night. The ones that resembled a prisoner's countdown on the inside of his cell wall. My own self-inflicted count as a reflection of my own prison. I knew you wouldn't hear it. You would call me a lying drama queen, just acting out for attention.

I stopped trying to get your attention a decade ago.

I put up with Edward's shit and yours. He made more money than me, but never seemed to have any, so I paid all the bills. The responsible thing to do. He stopped touching me and telling me I was pretty. He didn't even look at me anymore. He was too busy watching TV or making a mess. A mess that I would clean up. We didn't go out because he was always broke somehow and I didn't have enough money to support us and have fun.

Always together and forever alone.

He even snapped at me once when I told him I loved him. "Why do you always say that," he shouted, "it's like you say it just to get me to say it back."

I never told him I loved him again.

I found a dead end job where I was mistreated and underpaid just to make ends meet. The verbal abuse alone was enough to make me hide out in the bathroom stalls and cry - if I had any tears left to shed.

I looked forward to nothing. Not home, not work. Nothing.

I lost any friends I may have had, even the fake ones, when I met Edward. I threw my entire life into him and cut everything and everyone else out.

I fell into a deep depression. Anything outside of my normal routine went untouched. Anything that required non-muscle memory function passed me by.

I couldn't sleep or think. I barely ate, but only seemed to gain weight. I tried meds, but they never worked. I wanted to be numb, but I already was. Except the numbness I felt had a jagged edge that throbbed in my slipping consciousness. I wanted to be completely numb and void of all sensation. I was tired of the fucking pain!

Edward and I continued to live as cohabitants in the tiny apartment we managed to wrangle based on _my_ credit, but no longer as lovers. Not in the true sense.

I came out of the other side of my depression worse for wear. A shell of the shell of the person I already was. Everything was coated in a nasty gray shading. Life was dull and meaningless. I got rid of Edward in theory, but not in reality. He was still around, mooching off of me and contributing to the push in the revolving door that was my depression.

No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't leave him stranded. I tried to kick him out, but looking into his sad eyes made me lose all resolve. When he forgot to pay a bill, I just sucked it up and dug into my already low savings account to bail us out. I tried to tell myself that not paying it would mean I had to go without also. I still missed his touch from all those years ago. The way his eyes sparkled when he looked at me in the beginning.

I was unable to move past him. Past you. Past any of it.

He's seeing someone else now. Tanya's her name. I heard them on the phone. He's sweet with her like he was with me in the beginning. I have now realized he never loved me. I was a stool for him to step on and I could only be mad at myself for falling for that bullshit again.

And I didn't tell you because you never cared.

No one has ever loved me.

No one would ever love me.

And that was why I took my own life.

There wasn't much left to it anyway.

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**A/N**

**Thank you for reading. **

To see other entries in the Black Balloon Contest, please visit the C2 page: http://www{dot}fanfiction{dot}net/community/Black_Balloon_Contest/78669/


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